5 ms·
tl;dr for my comment: I agree, with caveats, and have personal experience to back up my opinion. Not a bad article but nothing really new. As an undergrad I m
by eitally 16y ago
tl;dr for my comment: I agree, with caveats, and have personal experience to back up my opinion.
Not a bad article but nothing really new. As an undergrad I majored in public history & religious studies (wanted to be a museum curator) while supervising a digitization lab in the special collections library. I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do with my life after I realized I hated curatorial work, so I got a job through Manpower doing web design. Modern web technologies were still emergent then (1999) and I was able to keep abreast pretty well for a few years, until my interests moved more into project management and then actual team leadership.
I've been successful so far and now direct about 60 great people worldwide. I've also had time to reformulate my career objectives and realized going back to school was a sensible thing to do, especially if I ever needed a piece of paper to validate my cv in this down economy. I chose a multi-disciplinary systems engineering program at NCSU and it's been a terrific experience that's meshed very well with my current role at work.
This was a longwinded introduction to my main point: I see other people in both my masters program and other graduate fields at the university who have absolutely no experience in the real world. Not only that, they still tend to believe that the management track of an MBA is where the money is. They're going to be sorely disappointed when they graduate and realize no company worth it's salt is going to think twice about hiring a newly minted MBA that 1) has never worked a real job and 2) has no management experience. I'm starting to work with both my department head and others to help mentor and guest lecture for these students, and hopefully jolt them back to reality.
This isn't to say that an MBA is useless, but an MBA should be a complement to one's work experience and is by no means a replacement. I completely agree with the author that a background in philosophy is often a better tool for a manager than an education in finance/management (still, too many companies lead by the Taylor style of gauging productivity and because Excel still runs the business world there's a strong tendency for managers to try to quantify performance based on metrics... the wrong metrics.).
- me2i81 16y ago"no company worth it's salt is going to think twice about hiring a newly minted MBA that 1) has never worked a real job and 2) has no management experience" It's a nice thought, and I suppose you could discount the vast majority of companies as not being worth their salt, but newly-minted MBAs from top schools seem to be doing just fine relative to the current economy.
- CWuestefeld 16y agonewly-minted MBAs from top schools seem to be doing just fine relative to the current economy As I understand it, college grads are generally doing better, unemployment-wise, than the workforce as a whole.
- eitally 16y agoI would argue that the top flight schools typically do a better job preparing their MBA students for the real world (externships, more realistic case studies with active participation from visiting corporate leaders, etc) than the bottom 90% do.
- todayiamme 16y agoBy the way, have you ever thought what type of people run HR? Yup, mostly MBAs who believe in such stuff and impressive resumes. What he should have said; no startup worth it's salt with hire them. Unless, of course they have some real skills.
- kgo 16y agoMost of the top programs strongly recommend that you do have several years of professional experience before applying.
- SoftwareMaven 16y agoI'm surprised at the number of coders I know who got MBAs that just wound up coding again afterwards (just with more debt). In many situations, the (wo)man makes the MBA, not the other way around. A person who is good with an MBA would likely be equally good without; the inverse holds true as well.
- sabj 16y agoThere is a difference between: Working a "real job" first (e.g., 2+2), vs. grad school w/o experience and Getting an MBA, and getting a super-top elite MBA. These distinctions aside, I do not think that an MBA is often worth the cost in both dollars and opportunities. I see too many of my peers just thinking they'll work for two years, get an MBA, do something cushy. Even if it's true, it seems... unfulfilling.